Inhibiting telomerase, an enzyme that rescues malignant cells from destruction by extending the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, kills tumor cells but also triggers resistance pathways that allow cancer to survive and spread, scientists reported.

"Telomerase is overexpressed in many advanced cancers, but assessing its potential as a therapeutic target requires us to understand what it does and how it does it," said senior author Ronald DePinho, M.D., president of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Growing older is not the same as aging. Everyone grows older all the time, but we aren’t necessarily aging as we do so since, by definition, the aging process is one of deterioration.

But we can actually grow new brain connections and even create new neurons from stem cells as a result of our thoughts. If you want to keep your brain and body healthy, you can start by adapting our suggestions into your personal plan.

The Summer 2017 issue of Conscious Lifestyle Magazine features Ray & Terry’s recommendations for building a better brain. As a Ray & Terry’s subscriber, we are happy to share the full article with you (pdf).

Immunotherapy is the new revolution in cancer treatment. As scientists discover new ways to adapt, or amplify, the body's natural defenses it opens the door to the development of better weapons to destroy tumors and kill cancers. With the potential to improve the effectiveness of such treatments, a new study has revealed insights into a possible "master switch" protein that directs immune cells to germs or cancers.

Canola oil is appealing because it is less expensive than other vegetable oils, and it is advertised as being healthy," explained study senior author Domenico Praticò, director of the Alzheimer's Center at Temple's Lewis Katz School of Medicine. "Very few studies, however, have examined that claim, especially in terms of the brain."

So the researchers set out to work with mice that had been engineered to contract Alzheimer's disease in the same way the condition affects humans: asymptomatic in early life and full-blown cognitive impairment when the rodents aged. At six months of age, when the mice still had no symptoms, they were split into two groups. One group was given a normal diet while the other had a normal diet plus the addition of approximately two tablespoons of canola oil each day.

What do cameras, audio recorders, and music players have in common? They're all things that we no longer have to carry around separately, since they're built into smartphones. Diabetics may soon be able to add blood glucose-measuring kits to that list, as scientists from the University of California San Diego have created a phone case that does the job.

Although it may look like a snake or a large earthworm, the ringed caecilian is actually an amphibian. The South American animal's interesting features go beyond its appearance, however. According to recent research, it may lead us to new treatments for cirrhosis.

In recent years, a number of investigations revealed that clinical reporting practices failed to meet ethical and legal standards in both academia and industry. But an analysis published today (December 5) in BMJ Open suggests that some reporting practices have improved—at least at a few pharmaceutical companies—based on a comparison of trials linked to drugs approved by the FDA in 2012 and 2014.

“The good news is, for the trials that the companies conducted in patients to gain regulatory approval of their drug, [transparency levels] went up,” says study co-author Jennifer Miller, a bioethicist at New York University and founder of Bioethics International, a non-profit dedicated to ethics and transparency in the pharmaceutical sector.

Not getting fat or developing diabetes while still enjoying a high-fat diet is the dream of many a fast-food fan. Although such dreams remain just that for us humans, they've become reality for mice involved in a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The activation of a protein pathway in fat cells in the mice allowed the animals to be fed a high-fat diet without becoming obese.

Car crashes, home injuries, fires, natural disasters. The difference between life and death often depends on the speed and efficiency of emergency care services. The work of doctors, paramedics, and nurses being in the first line of the battle against early and meaningless death or paralyzation is extremely difficult and inspirational at the same time. Sometimes there are only seconds left to save a patient’s life. In case of high-risk patients, each minute waiting for treatment significantly reduces their chance of surviving. This includes cardiac arrest patients, where brain damage typically starts within four to six minute

Immunotherapy, which involves adapting immune cells to destroy specific cellular targets, has made a name for itself treating cancer. But over the last few years, a handful of research groups have advanced T-cell therapies for viral infections, and are now on the cusp of commercialization. “Using T cells to target infectious diseases is not a new field,” says immunologist Michael Keller of Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., “but it’s something that’s expanding a great deal.”

A handful of groups in the U.S. offer donated T cells engineered in-house as antiviral therapies to bone marrow transplant patients, who are vulnerable to infections from common viruses. The treatments are still experimental, reaching only small numbers of patients so far. But almost 50,000 people a year receive blood-producing stem cell transplants and could potentially be helped by such an intervention. Keller is among those trying to advance antiviral immunotherapy. At Children’s National, for instance, he and colleagues have several ongoing Phase 1 and 2 trials that may help set the standard for bone marrow transplant treatment.

For a condition that affects nearly 15 percent of the world's population, there are remarkably few effective treatments for migraine sufferers. A new antibody treatment designed specifically for migraine prevention has just completed Phase III human clinical trials with remarkably positive results, raising hopes of a possible revolution on the horizon for sufferers of this debilitating condition.

For the last few years there has been major work examining the role of the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) in activating migraines. Research has clearly shown that CGRP contributes to the pain conditions of a migraine, so scientists have been working on developing treatments that block the key CGRP receptors in the brain.

There are currently four separate monoclonal antibody treatments being developed that target this mechanism and three of those drugs are already undergoing Phase III human clinical trials. One of first drugs to fully report Phase III results is called erenumab.

This year’s Top 10 Innovations highlight breakthroughs on this fundamental scale. Winning products that include cutting-edge single-cell protein and gene expression analyses, souped-up Cas9 proteins for CRISPR-based genome editing, and culture systems for research organoids illustrate the innovative drilling down into fine-scale biology. Other winners, such as a handheld blood-testing device and a biomarker detection system, underscore the importance of technological development in the clinical laboratory.

Much in the same way robotics entered manufacturing, AI is making its mark in healthcare by automating mundane, repetitive tasks. This is especially true in the case of detecting cancer. By leveraging the power of deep learning, algorithms can now be trained to distinguish between sets of pixels in an image that represents cancer versus sets that don’t—not unlike how Facebook’s image recognition software tags pictures of our friends without us having to type in their names first. This software can then go ahead and scour millions of medical images (MRIs, CT scans, etc.) in a single day to detect anomalies on a scope that humans just aren’t capable of. That’s huge.

This is definitely an exciting advancement in colon cancer research. Gene editing has reduced the amount of time that it takes to genetically engineer a tumor from two years to just a few months. Rapidly developing technology like this may pave the way for “personalized medicine,” where doctors can test several treatment options against a patient’s own cancer cells. Personalized, targeted therapy could make all the difference in young-onset colon cancers, which are often diagnosed at later stages and require aggressive treatment.

The first human trial examining the safety of a drug designed to reduce the levels of a corrupted protein that is responsible for the devastating effects of Huntington's disease has proven a success. These early, yet exciting results, suggest potential for a new drug that could possibly be adapted to treat other brain disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Huntington's disease is a devastating neurodegenerative condition caused by a mutation in a gene called huntingtin, which produces a protein of the same name. When this mutation is present the huntingtin protein is corrupted and subsequently damages brain cells, resulting in the disease's progressively irreversible effects on motor and cognitive skills.

Current genome-editing systems generally rely on inducing DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). This may limit their utility in clinical therapies, as unwanted mutations caused by DSBs can have deleterious effects. CRISPR/Cas9 system has recently been repurposed to enable target gene activation, allowing regulation of endogenous gene expression without creating DSBs. However, in vivo implementation of this gain-of-function system has proven difficult. Here, we report a robust system for in vivo activation of endogenous target genes through trans-epigenetic remodeling. The system relies on recruitment of Cas9 and transcriptional activation complexes to target loci by modified single guide RNAs. As proof-of-concept, we used this technology to treat mouse models of diabetes, muscular dystrophy, and acute kidney disease. Results demonstrate that CRISPR/Cas9-mediated target gene activation can be achieved in vivo, leading to measurable phenotypes and amelioration of disease symptoms. This establishes new avenues for developing targeted epigenetic therapies against human diseases.

The gut-brain connection is one of the more fascinating new areas of medical research. This intriguing two-way axis has been found to have numerous unexpected effects. On one hand some studies have demonstrated how magnetic brain stimulation can alter a person's gut microbiome while other studies have shown how gut bacteria could potentially play a role in the onset of PTSD and Alzheimer's.

A new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has revealed another strange gut-brain connection, this time between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and intestinal damage. Researchers have previously identified an odd connection between TBI and alterations in a person's gastrointestinal tract, but this is the first study to understand this interaction in detail and to reveal the two-way nature of the process.

A massive new international study has more than tripled the number of genetic variants associated with a longer lifespan. The study, which looked at genetic correlations among people with long-living parents, found distinct new genetic characteristics connected to lifespan, while also unexpectedly revealing potential gender-specific genetic pathways to a longer life.

There are, of course, a huge variety of factors that determine how long a person lives. Environment and lifestyle play major roles in affecting a person's lifespan, but genetic heritability is also relevant. Studies of twins have estimated the role of genetics to be between 20 and 30 percent in determining a person's lifespan.

Almost half of participants achieved and maintained diabetes remission at one year without antidiabetic medications

Type 2 diabetes can be reversed following an intensive weight management programme, according a randomised trial in adults who have had the condition for up to 6 years, published in The Lancet.

The study showed that after 1 year, participants had lost an average of 10kg, and nearly half had reverted to a non-diabetic state without using any diabetes treatment. The findings lend support to the widespread use of this type of intervention in the routine care of type 2 diabetes across health services.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania evaluated a new dental material tethered with an antimicrobial compound that can not only kill bacteria but can also resist biofilm growth. In addition, unlike some drug-infused materials, it is effective with minimal toxicity to the surrounding tissue, as it contains a low dose of the antimicrobial agent that kills only the bacteria that come in contact with it.

A team at MIT has genetically modified bacteria cells and developed a new 3D printing technique to create a "living tattoo" that can respond to a variety of stimuli.

Electronic tattoos and smart ink technologies are showing exciting potential for reframing how we think of wearable sensor devices. While many engineers are experimenting with a variety of responsive materials the MIT team wondered if live cells could be co-opted into a functional use.

Sprocket Express, a local New England fulfillment house, has been selected as a Top 3PL for 2018, included in a listing of leading third-party logistics providers selected by the editors of Multichannel Merchant.

"When I started Sprocket Express, one of my goals was to create local jobs in New England, said Dan Cence, CEO. “To be recognized as a leading fulfillment house reinforces our success and company mission to provide reliable service to the entrepreneur and mid-sized business.”

Researchers have uncovered a new target in the quest to extend the lifespan of mammals. Inhibiting a common enzyme found in all mammals, including humans, has been shown to extend the lifespan of flies and worms, suggesting it could be a promising new mechanism for anti-aging therapies to target.

As more strains of bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, scientists are warning that we could soon return to the "dark ages of medicine," where our drugs are ineffective against even the most basic of infections. While investigating the side effects of antibiotics and how bacteria can develop resistance to them, researchers from MIT and Harvard have found that the drugs can actually work against the body, weakening the immune system's ability to fight off the bugs.

To prevent the possible "superbug" doomsday scenario, teams of scientists are developing new treatments that don't require drugs, such as antimicrobial materials, lights and predatory bacteria. But antibiotics will still play an important part in future treatments, as researchers discover new classes of them or supercharge old ones. And in that vein, it pays to have a better understanding of just what antibiotics are doing to the body.

Japanese auto giant Toyota has unveiled a humanoid robot that can mirror its user’s movements, a product it says has uses as varied as elderly care and disaster response.

The T-HR3 can be controlled by a wearable system that allows users to operate the entire robot in real-time by simply moving their own limbs. It is one of the main attractions at the International Robot Exhibition that opened in Tokyo on Wednesday.

There have been a number of soft robots inspired by the ancient art of paper folding – origami – recently, including polymer-based microgrippers and the safety-first Twister. Researchers from Harvard and MIT say that robots made of soft materials are often not as strong as their rigid counterparts. This thinking has led to the development of inexpensive artificial muscles that have been designed to give soft robots superpowers.

Expanding on a study from earlier in 2017 that identified 52 genes that could be associated with intelligence, an international team of researchers has now suggested dozens of new genetic targets that may correlate with cognitive ability. The new study also found that many of these genes, potentially responsible for intelligence, could overlap with a range of conditions from increased lifespan to some autoimmune disorders.

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